Crimson Desert Charting the Unknown: release date, price and what is in it
Charting the Unknown is the first paid expansion for Crimson Desert, and it costs $24.99 on 15 October 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam and the Epic Games Store. Pearl Abyss announced it on 3 September during Sony's State of Play, and the short version of what it adds is water: Kliff takes command of a ship and sails past Pywel's known coastlines to uncharted islands, dives for sunken ruins and underwater treasure, and builds a house on the shore with the base-building system the main game already taught you. The story picks up after the base game's ending. There is no Mac App Store release at launch.
What Charting the Unknown adds
Four things, in the order Pearl Abyss put them.
A ship you command. You set sail across the ocean and explore uncharted islands, going past the coastlines the base game stops at. This is the headline change to how you move through Pywel: everything before it was walking, riding and the Abyss.
Underwater exploration. Beneath the surface there are sunken ruins, underwater treasure and, in Pearl Abyss's phrasing, hidden mysteries. The reveal trailer shows Kliff diving with a shark for company, and the pre-order bonus is a set of diving gear, which tells you how central the diving is meant to be.
Housing on the shore. The base-building system carries over into a beachside house. The trailer builds one; Pearl Abyss lists housing features as part of the expansion rather than as a free patch.
New stories, new enemies, more to do. The announcement names new stories, new enemies and additional activities, and says the story follows Kliff, Oongka and Damiane after the ending of the base game. It has not published a count of any of them.
That last sentence is the honest edge of this list. What follows is the difference between what was announced and what people are already writing.
Release date, price and pre-orders
The expansion unlocks on 15 October 2026 in the Americas and on 16 October in Europe and Asia, because Pearl Abyss set one global moment and let the calendar fall where it does:
- North America: 15 October, 15:00 PT / 18:00 ET
- Europe: 16 October, 00:00 CEST
- Asia: 16 October, 07:00 KST and JST
It is $24.99. Pre-orders opened on the day of the announcement: the PlayStation Store at 15:00 UTC on 3 September, then Steam, the Epic Games Store and Xbox at 21:00 UTC the same day. Pre-ordering gets you the Charter's Diving Set for Kliff and Oongka and the Charter's Light Diving Set for Damiane.
One platform is missing from that list. Crimson Desert sells on the Mac App Store, but Pearl Abyss's own notice says Charting the Unknown will not be available there at launch. It has not said when, or whether, that changes.
The name confuses people, and it is worth untangling: the full title is *Crimson Desert Enhanced: Charting the Unknown*. Enhanced is the free 2.00.00 update from 25 August that renamed the base game for everybody who owns it. Charting the Unknown is the paid expansion on top. Owning Enhanced does not mean you own this.
What it changes on the Crimson Desert map
Every content patch Crimson Desert has had so far rearranged the world it shipped with. The 1.16.00 trading patch added 133 trading posts, and they went onto ground you could already walk. Charting the Unknown is the first one that adds *territory*: ocean you sail, islands nobody has charted, and a layer underneath the water.
For a map hub that is a bigger deal than a patch with more markers in it, and it changes three things here.
The categories are not final. Sailing routes, islands and underwater sites are not things the current category set has names for. New categories arrive when the expansion does and we can see what the game actually calls them, not before.
Depth becomes a coordinate. A marker on a surface map answers "where". A sunken ruin needs "where, and how far down". Subnautica 2 taught this hub that lesson already, and the Crimson Desert map will borrow the answer.
The survey restarts for the new area. The markers on this hub are surveyed from our own play, category by category, with screenshot proof. Nothing about the expansion can be surveyed before 15 October, so anyone publishing a Charting the Unknown map before that date is publishing a guess or a datamine. We will not be doing either.
If you want the map to be useful on day one rather than in week three, the checklist and your own lists are the parts that carry over: your progress in Pywel stays exactly where it is when the expansion lands.
What Pearl Abyss has not said
Six weeks between an announcement and a release is enough time for a lot of confident writing about things nobody knows. Here is the list of what is genuinely open, so you can recognise an invention when you meet one.
How big the new area is. No island count, no ocean size, no number of hours. Pearl Abyss has never published an area figure for Pywel either, which is its own page on this hub.
Whether you have to finish the base game first. The story continues after the ending of the main campaign. That is a description of where the story sits, not a statement about a gate on the content, and Pearl Abyss has not published a level or progress requirement.
What the enemies are. "New enemies" is the whole of it. Any list of named bosses circulating right now is either read off the trailer or made up.
Whether it comes to Mac later. The notice says not at launch and stops there.
What the free patch alongside it will contain. Pearl Abyss has shipped seventeen or more free content patches since March and has not tied one to this date in writing.
When any of that changes, it changes on the hub's patches and roadmap page first, because that page is where the publisher's own posts get read. This one gets updated from it.
Häufige Fragen
- When does Crimson Desert: Charting the Unknown come out?
- 15 October 2026 at 15:00 PT in North America, which is 16 October at 00:00 CEST in Europe and 07:00 KST in Asia. Pearl Abyss announced the date on 3 September 2026 during Sony's State of Play, and pre-orders opened the same day.
- How much does Charting the Unknown cost?
- $24.99, on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam and the Epic Games Store. Pre-ordering adds the Charter's Diving Set for Kliff and Oongka and the Charter's Light Diving Set for Damiane, and nothing else has been announced as an edition or a bundle.
- Is Charting the Unknown the same as Crimson Desert Enhanced?
- No. Enhanced is the free 2.00.00 update from 25 August 2026 that renamed the base game for everyone who owns it. Charting the Unknown is the paid expansion that sits on top of it, and the full title of the DLC being Crimson Desert Enhanced: Charting the Unknown is what makes this confusing.
- Do you need to finish Crimson Desert before playing the expansion?
- Pearl Abyss has not published a requirement. What it has said is that the story continues after the ending of the base game, which places the narrative rather than gating the content. If a level or progress condition exists, it has not been announced.
- Is Charting the Unknown on Mac?
- Not at launch. Pearl Abyss's own notice says the expansion will not be available on the Mac App Store on 15 October, even though the base game sells there. No later date has been given.
- Will this map cover the Charting the Unknown islands?
- Yes, surveyed from our own play after 15 October, category by category, with a screenshot behind each marker. Nothing about the expansion can honestly be mapped before it is playable, so there will be no islands here until there are islands to visit.